Language Ideologies

Language Ideologies Rosa & Burdick

 Indeed, a potential unintended interpretation of the now canonical insight that ideas about language are never simply about language is that ideas about language are not about language at all.

Purportedly non-ideological approaches to the study of language characteristically take for granted the nature and meanings of linguistic signs. From this viewpoint, lin- guistic forms are objective phenomena, and the goal of language analysis is to under- stand their fundamental structure.

What are language ideologies?

Silverstein’s de nition of language ideologies as “a set of beliefs about language articu- lated by users as a rationalization or justi cation of perceived language structure and use” (1979: 193), with that of Irvine, who formulates language ideologies as “the cultural system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interests” (1989: 225). Wortham combines these approaches in his pragmatic conceptualization of language ideologies as “models that link types of linguistic forms with the types of people who stereotypically use them” (2008: 43).

Earlier scholars disavowed language ideologies:

Boaz argued that language patterns are independent of local ideas about them.

theories of performativity have shown that identity and authenticity should be understood as phenomena that are produced in particular historical and institutional contexts, rather than naturally occurring characteristics that emanate from one’s true nature (Butler 1990)

—> The nature of complexity here seems compatible with Mitchell’s Unsimple Truths; whereas the high-status theories may seek for non-contingent universals, more useful theories will articulate their contingency. 

Kroskrity (2000) has described language ideologies as a “cluster concept,” con- sisting of four overlapping dimensions: (1) language ideologies serve the interests of certain groups; (2) language ideologies are always multiple; (3) members may display varying degrees of awareness of language ideologies; and (4) language ideologies medi- ate between social structures and forms of talk.

“lan- guage and communication are critical aspects of the production of a wide variety of identities expressed at many levels of social organization” (Kroskrity, 2001: 106). Linguistic identities co-naturalize other social identities such as gender (Ho man, 2008; Queen, 2005) and ethnicity (Makihara, 2007; Shankar, 2008), as well as national identities, in signi cant ways.

Educational institutions have o en been the focus of language ideologies research (Davis, 2012 Heller, 1999)

Wortham has shown how “schools are important sites for establishing associations between ‘educated’ and ‘uneducated,’ ‘sophisticated’ and ‘unsophisticated,’ ‘o cial’ and ‘vernacular’ language use and types of students” (2008: 43). In mainstream US educational settings, linguistic practices are o en construed through “monoglossic ideologies” that promote socialization to the lan- guage that “ideally express[es] the spirit of [the] nation and the territory it occupies” (Gal, 2006: 163; García and Torres-Guevara, 2010).

Monoglossic ideologies —> Need to take into account the institutional context in which the language is being used

Research reviewed by Shankar and Cavanaugh (2012) under the title of language and materiality has conceptualized the semiotic objectification of language (Cavanaugh, 2005; Keane, 2003; Shankar, 2006), in which words, accents, and other forms and practices are commoditized, such that they can take on material value, or may even be recontextualized through marketing.

** Example of unicode support in Unfold.Studio ** And emoji! ** Idea to write a story that switches languages, and that circumscribes possibilities based on how the speaker is speaking